Patchwork Clockwork Soul
by Avetho
Summary: Sometimes a story requires a different point of view. Sometimes you need to see the world from the eyes of one who has watched it be reborn. Perhaps, it takes one who knows the history of the world to understand the mind of one who has watched the history of the world. Sometimes, things can only be changed by a scarred, patchwork, clockwork soul. (Ozpin's POV)


Atop a large cliff, there is a large castle. At the center of the castle, is a tall tower topped with glowing green light shining into the surrounding darkness. Just below that light, there is an office, an office containing clockwork, clockwork that tirelessly ticks away counting the seconds, minutes and hours each day. In this office resides a silver haired wizard, an old wizard that one could hardly tell is old by looks alone. A wizard who is currently looking over documents on a holographic screen on his desk whilst sipping hot cocoa from a mug by his side.

This silver haired man has dark brown eyes hidden behind green spectacles and wears a green suit. This wizard is named Ozpin, the Headmaster of the prestigious Beacon Academy of the Kingdom of Vale. As he types away, a small rift opens above his desk, causing him to avert his eyes towards it for a moment before he resumes his work. One small golden object drops from the rift and clatters upon Ozpin's glass and metal desk opposite from his position. A few minutes more pass of typing upon the holographic screen before Ozpin pushes his chair back, grabs his mug from the desk as well as his cane, takes a short sip of his hot cocoa from the mug, and walks to the other side of the desk to retrieve this object.

He picks up the object and inspects it closely. It is an old Scroll, a modern design however, one released just a month ago, but appears to have seen a decade worth of mistreatment or poor maintenance, all naturally occuring damage from overuse and time. He notes the smell of rot from the device, as if it has been in a place of death and war for some time. He presses his thumb to the fingerprint scanner on the device, noting how it opened right away.

"Hm. Odd that my finger opens it." Ozpin noted.

Briefly surfing through the data on the device, the video player application catches his attention due to it flashing. He opens the player before navigating to the newest entries, finding several video logs on the device, the most recent of which is titled _'Watch this first Oz .mk3d'_. Eyes sharpening, he walks back to his desk and sits down again, typing a short message to someone named Glynda Goodwitch before pressing a button on the desk that closes the shutters on the elevator door and the windows as well as disabling all electronic devices in the office. He places the device on the desk where the isolated terminal connects to the Scroll and projects the video file.

Appearing on the desk is a young man in his mid twenties, with a dark tan, hazel eyes, messy dark brown hair and freckles across his face. He has a familiar cane at his side and familiar dark green spectacles covering his eyes, though the familiar cocoa mug is absent. He is wearing a worn out variant of Ozpin's own current outfit, consisting of a dark brown blazer over a stained white undershirt with black slacks and dress shoes. The shoes are scuffed up, the cane is damaged, one of the spectacle lenses is cracked, there are soot stains on his skin and both the blazer and slacks are slightly torn at the edges. The man's eyes appear worn out and tired, also evidenced by heavy bags under his eyes.

"Hello there Ozpin. At least, I hope Ozpin is the only one seeing this. Although, it would be more correct to say I hope I am watching this, considering that I am you from hopefully a little over a dozen years in your future. If my hopes are well founded, then that means my research into our heritage has born fruit and I successfully sent something back in time completely isolated from the flow of time, meaning the Scroll you are watching this file on through your isolated desk terminal has not vanished due to self-repairing time paradoxes. If you have gotten this, it means I have failed. Me being here means we succeeded, but ultimately won the battle and lost the war. Queen is dead, but the world died with her and so did Humanity's last line of defense, the Silver Eyes. I would ask that if there is anyone else in the room, have them leave now and continue to the next entry in the video player." the man said.

Ozpin tapped the next entry on the Scroll seeing that he sealed his office already. The man showed up again, this time with slightly more damage to the cane and deeper bags under his eyes. He is also leaning on the cane for support. The cane's clockwork mechanisms are no longer ticking away.

"Now for the explaining part. My name is Oscar Pine, I am twenty five years old, although at this moment in time on your end my vessel is likely only twelve years old and still living with his aunt somewhere in Mistral. To further lend credit to my claims to be you, I guess I shall verify what only you know. Our original name is Sir Ozma d'Arc-Knight, we went on a quest to save Lady Salem d'Arcadia from her tower where she was held for years. Afterwards we got engaged with the beautiful golden-blonde Lady Salem, but we soon died to natural causes before Salem went to the Brothers to revive us. Light denied her plea, explaining that it would break the sanctity of life, before she went to Darkness and had us revived, which ended with Light cursing her with true immortality. After we were brought back by Darkness, we were killed by Light, but given a choice to become a guide for humanity and to protect the Relics, also then given the Curse of Infinite Legacy which allows us to reincarnate, but we reunited with Salem instead to reign over Remnant like gods. The four relics were that of Knowledge, Creation, Destruction and Choice. Together with Salem we had four children, but we ended up fighting and our children died in the crossfire. Now, we would like to believe that the fault for their deaths lies with Salem, but we were both equally at fault, as had one of us backed down from our battle they would have survived. Since then we have been reincarnating for many centuries and have accrued hundreds of souls in our collective, all focused on fighting against Salem in the hopes of either destroying her or eternally holding her back. I hope this verifies my identity?" Oscar asked.

"It certainly does." Ozpin muttered, knowing Oscar's recording can't hear him.

"In any case, there are some things you must and mustn't do. At the moment, Amber Autumn, the Fall Maiden, is still in one piece. One month before the next school year begins, Amber will be travelling by horseback before she is ambushed by a member of Salem's Inner Circle. Her name is Cinder Fall. I seriously doubt the validity of that surname, but that won't be important as she uses Fall whenever a surname is required. Salem had managed to create a Beetle Grimm that is capable of extracting parts of the soul of a target, such as the Fall Maiden powers. At this moment, Cinder is likely being trained by Salem to be a fierce combatant, one strong enough to handle Amber. I suggest checking on the status of two people, named Emerald Sustrai, again the surname seems suspect, as well as Mercury Black, son of infamous assassin Marcus Black. We haven't checked the status of Marcus Black recently, so I suggest looking into that right now to know if Mercury has murdered his father yet or not. You can find photographic identification of anyone I mention on this Scroll as well." Oscar continued.

As Oscar mentioned them, the Scroll displayed a picture to put a face to each name.

Upon mentioning Amber, a photo of a young woman with tan skin and black hair wearing classic clothes on horseback appears. She has a staff across her back, one that appears to have a Dust Crystal on the end as if she were a young wizard. Flames are coming from her eyes as she conjures a fireball in one hand with a joyful expression on her face.

Upon mentioning Cinder, a woman with long, silky black hair and fiery ember eyes is put on screen, wearing a red dress that appears to be glowing orange, suggesting the dress is Dustwoven. She is seen throwing fire from her hands with flames coming from both eyes, glaring angrily at someone off screen.

Upon mentioning Emerald, a young woman with short mint green hair and blood red eyes shows up, wearing a white crop top, although the rest of her is off screen due to the angle of the camera. She is seen glaring at someone beside her, an out of focus shot of a young man with grey hair and grey eyes.

Upon mentioning Mercury, the same image flashes, focusing on the man beside Emerald now. He has grey hair like ash and gunmetal grey eyes, a cocky smirk on his face as he seems to be teasing Emerald. He has a dark grey blazer on, but nothing else is visible due to the angle of the camera.

"The fighting styles I have come to know over time. Cinder heavily uses her Semblance in battle, which seems to allow her to superheat materials and manipulate the shape of them, commonly used to make constructs out of glass such as a bow and arrows or twin swords using sand, both her preferred fighting styles. Upon getting the Fall Maiden powers, she trains them heavily, likely under the close watch of Salem, and she tends to use those as much as she can. Emerald uses a pair of pistols that turn into kusarigama, she leans heavily on an illusion Semblance to make opponents not see her or to trick them with something that isn't really there or by changing the appearance or location of something. Rely on hearing and feeling as much as possible around her as she can only affect visuals while she is moving as well as a single target at a time without much strain. Mercury lost his legs and his Semblance against Marcus and now has metal legs with built in high capacity, high impact shotguns in the heels for a very potent and damaging kickboxing style of fighting. Amber is not trained in battle but has decent control over the Fall Maiden powers, and she uses her staff like a bo-staff rather well as it stands. It is best to bring her in as a professor for the next year if you can, train her in battle and her powers." Oscar suggested.

Ozpin nods along, absorbing this new information from himself like a decompressing sponge in water.

"Now, there are documents I have made on this Scroll explaining everything in much greater detail, as well as details on new technology to implement early, new techniques you should learn that up to now you never had a use for, more information about the future as I know it right now, as well as major events that must be payed close attention to. I have also made breakthroughs on the nature of our soul, it only took me high stress and a dozen years to figure it out. Please look at these files at your own pace, but do please work on these things before the next year begins. And one last thing, please find Oscar Pine in your time, perhaps take him in as an apprentice, since if you die by some cause, you will certainly reincarnate into him. Well, good luck, because I know you will need it. I also detail the method to sending something back in time, so you may get more Scrolls sent back by other versions of us should you make a major change but not change the outcome my world has suffered. This is it then for me. Well, I hope this works. Farewell, Ozpin." Oscar finished, the sounds of distant growling, roaring, hissing and cawing echoing through the building Oscar is in as well as the sounds of walls being smashed apart before Oscar stopped the recording.

"So a tragic end, but one we can change. I don't know whether to thank the Brothers or not for allowing me to be born with an Aspect of Time." Ozpin said.

Ozpin began navigating the Scroll, reading through the documents contained on the device.

One such document contained an intricate pattern of lines forming a circle with many smaller circles and symbols contained within, lines connected them in certain patterns. This document is entitled Rewind Array, its purpose written as 'An intricate magic circle designed to absorb the last of a wizard's power, given they are in possession of an Aspect of Time, in order to send a small object back to a previous point in time without creating a self-repairing time paradox'. It is noted as well that Oscar will use the Rewind Array to send back the Scroll currently on Ozpin's desk, the use of 'will use' being a tell that Oscar wasn't entirely sure of its functionality.

Scrolling through the documents, Ozpin kept reading each one, finding interesting things that Oscar suggested he implement sooner rather than later or not at all such as in the original timeline. Scrolling further, spending hours on the reading, Ozpin came across a very interesting file that was entitled _'Research on our soul .xlsm'_. Ozpin opened the document and began to read aloud.

"After running several tests on our soul, I have managed to determine the nature of it, or at least a portion of its nature. The best way to describe the framework and the current state of our soul is that of a Patchwork Clockwork Parasite. Each new soul it enters, it nestles itself inside like a parasite does to a larger animal, or how a Geist takes over the surroundings to make itself a body. After our soul enters, like clockwork it begins to integrate itself over a set period of time into the outer soul, soon enough taking over it entirely and dissolving the personality of the outer soul, leaving just Ozma. Over time this increases the processing power of our soul and mind as more minds get melded together into one monolithic entity. The true purpose of the Curse of Infinite Legacy was to have our soul grow in power and intelligence until the point at which we could overcome Salem's cunning and her overwhelming power in order to kill her in one-on-one battle. Unfortunately, she had sabotaged us upon our death in the battle that killed our children, damaging a core element of the integration sequence resulting in the dissapearance of the Mana Pathways. Over time, our mana reserves kept regenerating slower and slower until now where we have taken years to regain even a slight bit of mana after gifting the Branwen Twins with their avian forms. Extensive study of the original Mana Pathways in our innermost souls has gotten me to this point in my research. Using our Aura, we can sacrifice some regeneration rate to force open a Mana Pathway all the way down to Ozma at our core. The only one of our souls that can use magic is Ozma who is trapped at the very center and deprived of mana. A good analogy for the arrangement of the souls is as if the Mana Pathways were air intakes for an air conditioning unit. If one were to keep adding filter material over the intake, eventually air would not be able to flow into the intake due to there being far too many layers. Likewise, our mana regeneration rate is near zero due to there being far too many mana-inept souls surrounding the Mana Pathways. Below is a diagram that you should understand on the layers of our soul as well as the qualities of each soul in particular, both things you must intrinsicly know and understand to be capable of opening Mana Pathways all the way down." Ozpin read.

Taking some time to read all the data, Ozpin paused every so often to feel out his soul, matching the information learned with the current state of his souls. As instructed, he closes his eyes and focuses his attention inwards using his outermost soul to observe the entirety of his being. What he sees is shocking. He sees something resembling a deep cavern in each layer down, large arrays of clockwork and pipes joining each layer to the next, the clockwork ticking in perfect one second intervals. As he seeks deeper in his souls, he finally comes across a glowing core of silver light with large channels carved into it, each glowing a soft but dim green light that appears to be receeding inwards. Delving deeper, he finds a core of dark light, glowing a sickly purple in color with golden constructs holding it all together. Diving one more layer inwards, Ozpin finds a softly glowing green core with the clockwork vanishing into its surface, tendrils of green reaching out to the outer layer and connecting to the channels from above. The core appears small, as if it is like a deflated lung running low on air. Ozpin relaxes and resurfaces to the real world, taking a relaxing breath after the spiritual and mental dive into the depths of his very being. He takes some time to practice the dive, speeding up the time it takes to get to the innermost level, getting quickly used to the feeling of gauging his mana levels as he understands it.

Moving to sit on the floor in the middle of his office, Ozpin takes a long sip of his hot cocoa before taking a meditative pose and focusing on his soul. He visualizes clearing a path for a channel to connect to one of the ones found on the now named Silver Layer, directing his Aura to move aside and form a channel through the cavernous upper layers. A path slowly forms, digging down over the course of several minutes as the practical ocean of Auras make room with the exception of the outermost layer. With the path complete, Ozpin dives back to the now named Emerald Layer at the center to see how quickly it is regenerating. He finds the rate of mana recovery to be sufficient for now, filling at roughly a single percent of his original rate, although that is a spectacular improvement compared to before. Finding his efforts satisfactory, Ozpin returns to his feet only to find that several hours have passed, making the current time very early morning the next day. Sighing at having lost track of time, noting the irony given his possession of an Aspect of Time that has allowed him to perfectly keep time ever since his birth, Ozpin smiles before deactivating the barriers in his office.

Noting his cocoa is now cold, he summons forth some magic to reheat it, a soft green glow of energy wafting around his hand as a small flame encompasses the mug. After a minute or so, he takes a sip of his cocoa and sighs at the good temperature before plodding towards the large window and looking out over his school campus whilst leaning on his cane, The Long Memory.

"Well... I dare say, that was a thing. It certainly seems that things are shaping up to be rather exciting these next few years." Ozpin said.

* * *

END OF CHAPTER

* * *

A/N: Did you catch the easter eggs?

The _.mk3d_ file format is a multimedia format for 3D video with the _Matroška Multimedia Container_. In real life, the MMC is a freely lisenced video format that supports variable audio bitrate and video framerate, chapters, metadata, video streaming, attachments, 3D video and use of hardware players. At this moment in time, support for interactive menus is being worked on, but so far it is the most versatile multimedia format currently out there. In my headcanon for the World of Remnant, the name is derived from an ancient art form in Mantle called the _Matryoshka Doll_, which is the name used in Russia, which is what us English speakers know as a _Russian Nesting Doll_. The name of the media format references how there can be a theoretically infinite amount of dolls inside the first doll, like the unlimited capacity for video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks that one _.mkv_ file can hold. In Remnant, the _.mk3d_ file format is used for all audio, slideshow and video media as well as for holographic media and is developed by the _Matroška Foundation_. The caron over the 's' is very important as it differentiates between two words, sans-caron it means 'sailor suit' and with-caron it refers to the nesting dolls. The caron makes the 's' be pronounced as 'sh' instead of 's'.

The _.xlsm_ format is Microsoft's Macro-enabled Excel Open-XML spreadsheet file format. It allows for the most fully featured Excel document you can make with the use of custom functions, code, user forms and data entry. It is the most powerful form of Excel spreadsheet and is not for the faint of heart. In the World of Remnant, the _.xlsm_ is for a spreadsheet system called _Eclipse_ made by the company called _Atlasoft_. It got the _.xlr_, the _.xls_ and the _.xlsx_ file formats including the _.xlsm_ format after Eclipse got an overhaul called the _Excel Update_ about a year after the advent of the _Portable Scroll_, now simply called a _Scroll_, which added programming tools into the spreadsheet editor program for more advanced spreadsheets. Ozpin's closed terminal in his desk is capable of opening the not-yet-made updated format of Eclipse document that came out in Atlas shortly before the _40th Vytal Festival Tournament_.

At the end I reference the name of Ozpin's cane, _The Long Memory_. The mechanics behind it "Storing Time" as the show and the Wiki puts it relates to him being in possession of an _Aspect of Time_. Through his old Staff from his time as Ozma, he is able to siphon some power, or _Temporal Energy_, from his Aspect of Time. Using this Temporal Energy, the cane can accelerate the passage of time for the soul currently wielding the cane, and thus the body of the one using the cane. Should someone else use a _Temporal-type Semblance_ around Ozpin, such as _Harriet Bree_ of the _Atlesian Special Operatives unit_, the cane will automatically accelerate the user's _Timescale_ should they focus on the user of the Temporal-type Semblance. An example would be that if _Weiss Schnee_ or _Winter Schnee_ were to accelerate their Timescale using the _Time Dilation Glyph_, if Ozpin were to focus on their speed, the cane would accelerate Ozpin's Timescale to match them. Were he to focus on Harriet Bree's speed with her Semblance, the cane would, again, match her Timescale.


End file.
